Today 1.6 task manager brings natural language to iCal

The iCal-integrated event and task manager has gained natural "dinner at 6pm" …

Second Gear has updated Today, its event and task manager that integrates with iCal and offers a condensed view of the day's agenda. The new version supports natural language when creating events and to-dos, plays better with Spaces, and fixes a handful of bugs.

Using natural language to create iCal items is easily Today 1.6's best new feature, and one of the best things to happen to Leopard's Calendar Store ecosystem for syncing tasks between apps. Web apps like Remember the Milk have allowed users to create and schedule events for some time simply by typing "Dinner with friend Fri 6pm," so it's great to see this ability come to iCal. "I honestly think its quicker to create events and tasks in Today now rather than iCal because of this," developer Justin Williams told Ars. You'll still have to type the item's name in its own field, then tab to the alarm area to type something like "tomorrow 6pm," but it's still nice to see.

The other major change in Today 1.6 is better behavior when switching between Spaces when using Today's menubar-only mode. Previously, Today's window could act wonky or stick in one space or another, but it appears that all methods of moving Today's window between Spaces (click-drag while switching, drag to edge of screen to switch and bring the window along, etc.) now work as intended. "A word of caution, though, that there is a bug with OS X that causes Spaces changes to not be picked up by menu bar applications without a dock icon," Williams told Ars. But, he said, "restarting the app fixes it."